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Fort Smith Travel Articles
- A Wild, Wooly Past: Outlaws met their end in old Fort Smith, Arkansas
By Ann Terry Hill, The History Channel Magazine
The old saying : There is no Sunday west of St. Louis and no God west of Fort Smith” applies to the Fort Smith of the frontier. And although northwestern Arkansas, were the town resides, is more civilized today, it still offers reminders of its wild and wooly history that speak of a time when it was the drop-off point to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), and where desperados often found safety—if the U.S. Marshals based in Fort Smith didn’t take them back to face justice and house them in the jail known as “Hell on the Border.”
The Fort Smith National Historic Site includes the jail, a reproduction of the hanging gallows, and the restored courtroom. And such long ago personalities as outlaw Cherokee Bill and Hangin’ Judge Isaac Parker linger in the air like ghosts and bring to life the site that makes Fort Smith a living history lesson. It also features the remains of the two frontier forts and the Federal Court for the Western District of Arkansas. The site tells the story of Fort Smith as a military outpost and the seat of law and order in the Wild West. It commemorates a significant phase of America’s westward expansion, standing as a reminder of 80 turbulent years in the history of federal Indian policy.
The National Park Service Trail of Tears marker speaks of the thousands of displaced Indians—including the Creeks, Chickasaws, Cherokees, and Seminoles—who were moved from their eastern homelands. In 1838 the U.S. government forcibly removed more that 16,000 Cherokees alone from their homelands in Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, and Georgia, and sent them to Indian Territory.
Slammer celebs
Some of the most famous outlaws of the West—including the James Dalton, and Younger gangs; Bell Starr; Cherokee Bill; and Rufus Buck Gang—at one time or another were incarcerated in the Fort Smith jail. It is said the stench from the jail was so strong that the odor rose through the ceiling and permeated Judge Parker’s courtroom directly above. Parker presided over this courtroom from 1875 to 1896, and came to be known as “the Hangin’ Judge” because he sentenced more men to death than any other jurist. (In truth, of the 13,500 cases he heard, only 160 were sentenced to death, and only 79 of them actually hanged.
Carolyn Joyce, sales manager of the visitor’s center, portrays Miss Laura Zeigler, Fort Smith most successful madam. In vintage costume, Joyce captures visitors; imaginations and transports them to an era when debauchery was the norm. She welcomes visitors: “Our Brothel Still Takes Care of Visitors!”
In 2007 Fort Smith was selected as the location for the U.S. Marshals Museum, to be completed by 2011. The structure will sit on the bank of the Arkansas River and across the river from Oklahoma, where so many of marshals launched their forays into Indian Territory in pursuit of justice, law, and order.
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